I'm a little bit into island 2 and the game is still handholding and railroading me down this single linear path. This is like the Final Fantasy XIII of Pokemon.
This game is major league boring for me right now. I like exploring, it's probably my favourite part of the pokemon games, just being told to "go on an adventure" but all sense of adventure is lost in these games by the endless amount of arbitrary blockages such as "This barrier can only be opened by Island Captains" or "Hey, my Stoutland is trying to find items, can you please not use this entire half of the city kthx". You aren't exploring if you're being told exactly where to go and are forced to do so before you can see anything else.
I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have to physically drag Kukui and Lillie with me everywhere I go, those two are insufferable. If I was going to each island on my own and talking to the Kahuna's/leaders of my own volition it wouldn't feel so damn stifling but I'm being chaperoned by idiots who keep interrupting me to tell me how amazing my adventure is and when I arrive the kahuna+captain are immediately waiting for us all and they have a nice long chat about who they all are and then saying "I look forward to talking to you later". Because apparently I would've absolutely lost my mind in confusion if I'd had to ask around town and find them myself -.- that would be too much agency for a child.
They had this great opportunity to really allow the player to explore this amazing world they've built and instead it feels like a guided tour that insists on telling you how beautiful everything is rather than just letting it be beautiful and having the player find that beauty themselves. Imagine if you'd been given the island and told "The captain is somewhere on this island. Find them, complete their trial, and return to me (The Kahuna) for your grand trial battle.
And then go. On your own, discovering the island at your own pace. The game shouldn't protect you from failure! Let the player go to areas that are "too strong" (i.e actually the level of the pokemon you carry rather than versing a series of trainers with ONE pokemon 2 levels lower than your lowest.) These islands are really cool and I want to explore them and find all the areas myself. I want to learn the routes and how they interconnect and not be told to go this one way up and around and then arbitrarily have the other routes available later.
I HATED the "story" moment (and I use 'story' loosely) where Lillie has lost Nebby again and is like "HEY YOU, BOY, FETCH MY CLOUD POOF FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT FLOWER FIELD!"
There is no point to this. It is there purely to force the player to enter this cool flower-filled alcove. An area that would've been amazing to find on my own since it's visually distinct from the rest of the island, carries a unique pokemon (Oricorio), has several items of use and also a Poke Finder spot. But instead no it has to make sure you visit it now because reasons.
And while we're at it, the Poke Finder is such a missed opportunity. Firstly, the framerate is godawful but that's more a technical issue than a design one. Each pokemon has like... 2 cycles of activity it can do and it just does them over and over and over and over while you snap the same 2 pictures (the optimal closeness for each pattern) until your film runs out. You can end it early, but since there's a noticeable delay between pressing the button and the actual photo taken you better use all the film or you might be missing half the pokemon or it might have turned too far away. And then the prize you get is "Zoom" and "ZOOM MORE". I can't wait for version 4 -.- On top of that, there seem to be 2, maybe 3 different pokemon in each spot you can take photos of? and when you start taking photos it's always in plain view and will just go through its cycle. And then you try again and YIPPEE it's the same pokemon doing the same cycle. It took me 5 tries of taking photos of the same shitty Oricorio pattern before I got a chance to take photos of Cutiefly.
I feel like this could've been a REALLY fun mini-game if they'd just given you this big viewpoint and had any of the available pokemon randomly come out of their hiding area and you had to quickly zoom in and snap a picture before it re-hid. Y'know. Like ACTUAL wildlife photography. Instead it's the most basic point and click exercise you could imagine.
This game is such a slog.